Free Republic

With an election looming, Barack Obama is politicizing everything under his control- including programs which would best be kept quiet. Drones have become the new plaything for Obama. They offer are seemingly cleaner approach to war. Drones were developed under the Bush administration and expanded under Obama. A recent NY Times article disclosed a surprising amount of information, including one stunner- that it is Obama himself who decides who dies. Our President personally authorizes the assassination of persons believed to be involved in terrorist activities. It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of...

Disclaimer: The following is a series of fictional accounts of theoretical situations. However, the information contained within was taken from established scientific journals on covered technology and military studies of real life combat scenarios. Alt-Market does not condone the use of any of the tactics described within for “illegal” purposes. Obviously, the totalitarian subject matter portrayed here is “pure fantasy”, and would never be encountered in the U.S. where politicians and corporate bankers are forthright, honest, and honorable, wishing only the sweetest sugar coated chili-dog best for all of mankind… Imagine, if you will, a fantastic near future in which...

Pressure is mounting to normalize the use of drones in the United States. "Don't drone, me, bro!"—that's one way to sum up Charles Krauthammer's heated reaction to last week's news that the Federal Aviation Administration had loosened restrictions on local police departments' use of surveillance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. "Stop it here, stop it now," Krauthammer exclaimed on Fox News's "Special Report" Monday, "I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home. ... I'm not encouraging, but I am predicting that the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that's been hovering over his...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – With the use of domestic drones increasing, concern has not just come up over privacy issues, but also over the potential use of lethal force by the unmanned aircraft. Drones have been used overseas to target and kill high-level terror leaders and are also being used along the U.S.-Mexico border in the battle against illegal immigration. But now, these drones are starting to be used domestically at an increasing rate. The Federal Aviation Administration has allowed several police departments to use drones across the U.S. They are controlled from a remote location and use infrared sensors and...

Corporate news blackout as Obama designates John Brennan as the sole person in charge of designating people to be assassinated. John Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor was a name that you did not see on the Mainstream media today as the continue to run stories that serve to distract the masses from stories that matter. Most recently he publicly spoke about the drone program calling it moral and ethical and just. According to reports from the Associated Press, John Brennan has now seized the lead in choosing who will be targeted for drone attacks and raids and Obama has delegated...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – With the use of domestic drones increasing, concern has not just come up over privacy issues, but also over the potential use of lethal force by the unmanned aircraft. Drones have been used overseas to target and kill high-level terror leaders and are also being used along the U.S.-Mexico border in the battle against illegal immigration. But now, these drones are starting to be used domestically at an increasing rate. The Federal Aviation Administration has allowed several police departments to use drones across the U.S. They are controlled from a remote location and use infrared sensors and...

Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys. If the drone operator sees you doing anything of interest (Is your fertilizer for the roses or to fuel a bomb? Is that Sudafed for your cold or your meth habit? Are you smoking in front of your kids?), the feds say they may take a picture of you and keep it. The...

This was filmed in Elgin, Illinois about 40 miles from Chicago. I assume it's for the NATO summit this week as a security measure.

Unmanned drones could soon be buzzing in the skies above many U.S. cities, as the federal government green-lights the technology for local law enforcement amid widespread privacy concerns. The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday began to explain the rules of the sky for these newly licensed drones at potentially dozens of sites across the country. The agency, on its website, said that government "entities" will have to obtain a special certificate in order to fly the aircraft, adding that the FAA is "streamlining the process for public agencies to safely fly (drones) in the nation's airspace." In doing so, the...

Military futurist Peter Singer -- and consultant for the forthcoming Call of Duty -- reveals what kind of dark assumptions are baked into the next blockbuster game. The Internet has been abuzz over details -- and several intriguing YouTube videos -- of the upcoming "Call of Duty: Black Ops II," scheduled to hit shelves in November. A sequel to the 2010 blockbuster "Call of Duty: Black Ops," the latest iteration of the video game continues the saga of American and Russian operatives immersed in a complex 1960s Cold War plot. But much of the sequel takes place in 2025, when...

U.S. Air Force policy permits the incidental collection of domestic imagery by unmanned aerial systems (drones), but ordinarily would not allow targeted surveillance of a U.S. person.  The Air Force policy was restated in a newly reissued instruction on oversight of Air Force intelligence.“Air Force Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, exercise and training missions will not conduct nonconsensual surveillance on specifically identified US persons, unless expressly approved by the Secretary of Defense, consistent with US law and regulations,” the instruction stated.On the other hand, “Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent.”“Collecting information on specific targets...

Looky here, no drone sites in Illinois! Actually, the direct Google map link has a curious list of mainly college campuses and police departments. Apparatchiks. Check it out. Keep in mind, these are the authorized sites. Kate, at Small Dead Animals, kills with the juxtaposition of it all.

Is there a drone in your neighbourhood? Rise of spy planes exposed after FAA is forced to reveal 63 launch sites across U.S. Unmanned spy planes are being launched from locations in 20 states and owners include the military and universities. There are at least 63 active drone sites around the U.S, federal authorities have been forced to reveal following a landmark Freedom of Information lawsuit. The unmanned planes – some of which may have been designed to kill terror suspects – are being launched from locations in 20 states. Most of the active drones are deployed from military installations,...

Harold Koh, who once called Bush the "torturer in chief," has become one of President Obama's fiercest defenders of aerial drone strikes.

American scientists have drawn up plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones capable of flying over remote regions of the world for months on end without refuelling. The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the US government's principal nuclear research and development agency – and defence contractor Northrop Grumman, were designed to increase flying time "from days to months" while making more power available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia. "It's pretty terrifying prospect," said Chris Coles of Drone Wars UK, which campaigns against the increasing...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.-operated drones carried out deadly missile strikes against suspected al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and Yemen on Friday, U.S. government sources said. There was no connection between the targets in the two locations, other than the fact that both sets of militants who were attacked were believed to have had some connection with al Qaeda affiliates, .. Reports from Aden said that at least five suspected al Qaeda militants traveling in a car in southern Yemen's Shabwa province were killed when a drone strike set their vehicle on fire. Witnesses said a second drone hit an empty...

NATO will buy U.S.-made reconnaissance drones and equipment for more than €1 billion ($1.3 billion) after the war in Libya highlighted shortcomings in its surveillance and targeting capabilities. An alliance official said Wednesday the total included five of Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Global Hawks, ground control stations, analysis equipment, and training for operators. He spoke on condition of anonymity following NATO rules. The official said the order, which coincides with sharp defense cuts across the alliance, is expected to be signed in spring. Deliveries will take place between 2015 and 2017. He said 13 NATO nations will band together to buy...

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), demanding data on certifications and authorizations the agency has issued for the operation of unmanned aircraft, also known as drones. Drones are designed to carry surveillance equipment – including video cameras, infrared cameras and heat sensors, and radar – that can allow for sophisticated and almost constant surveillance. They can also carry weapons. Traditionally, drones have been used almost exclusively by military and security organizations. However, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses drones inside the United States to patrol the U.S....

FORT SMITH, Ark. — A plan by Air Force officials would remove the A-10 aircraft mission from the 188th Fighter Wing in Fort Smith next year and possibly replace it with one involving remotely piloted aircraft. The proposal released by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz on Friday would give the 188th Fighter Wing an MQ-1/9 Remote Split Operations Squadron that would be made up of unmanned aerial vehicles commonly referred to as drones. The MQ-1 and MQ-9 wouldn't be assigned to the base, only a ground control operation station from which the unmanned aircraft are operated. [snip]...

[snip] Air Force Secretary Michael Donley met Tuesday with Michigan Reps. Candice Miller and Tim Walberg, who concerned about losing the A-10 mission at Selfridge Air National Guard Base. “Secretary Donley indicated that the Obama Administration is not open to making any alterations to their proposed cuts and all of the cuts outlined last week will be included in the budget the President plans to send to Congress next week,” the two Republicans said in a joint statement. Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, left a Thursday meeting with Donley still frustrated with the Pentagon’s plans for the Iowa National Guard’s 132nd...

Congress is demanding drones in the air over the United States - without considering the civil liberties issues. Within the span of three days last week, the House and then the Senate passed a law - H.R. 658 - requiring the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to speed up, within 90 days, its current licensing process for government use of drones domestically and to open the national airspace to drone aircraft for commercial and private use by October 2015. While the law requires the FAA to develop guidance on drone safety, the law says absolutely nothing about the privacy or transparency...

America's police state: The drones are coming Friday, February 10, 2012 A new federal law accelerating domestic use of government aerial surveillance drones brings America frighteningly close to an Orwellian police state. President Obama is expected to sign the FAA Reauthorization Act, which expedites approval for federal, state and local police to use these drones. The Federal Aviation Administration's existing case-by-case approach is chilling enough -- it's being sued over its refusal to disclose publicly which agencies use drones and how they're used. Still, it's known that the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection arm uses drones domestically....

I think the Department of Homeland Security just called me a terrorist. Not only me, but millions of other law-abiding Americans, not to mention Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Patrick Henry, among others.

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace. The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Something tells me that the University of Pennsylvania is not in the toy business. Got to see this!

<p>In an effort to mend badly frayed relations with Pakistan, the CIA has suspended drone missile strikes on gatherings of low-ranking militants believed to be involved in cross-border attacks on U.S. troops or facilities in Afghanistan, current and former U.S. officials say.</p>

In the cat and mouse game of espionage every once in a while back operations are exposed to the light of day. The loss of a RQ-170 Sentinel drone was such an event. As reported the drone was being used to gather real-time intelligence against an alleged nuclear weapons facility inside of Iran. The Iranians are using the drone in their propaganda campaign against the United States in order to distract attention away from its own nuclear weapons development, missile development programs and the evasion of the British Embassy in Tehran. Why Use Drones? Drones are extremely effective by maintaining...

WASHINGTON: US is eyeing to sell its battle proved armed drones to key allies, including India, but the move is being opposed by lawmakers who don't want the technology to be exported. "The Pentagon wants more North Atlantic Treaty Organization members to have such pilotless aircraft to ease the burden on the US in Afghanistan and in future conflicts like the alliance's air campaign in Libya this year," Obama Administration officials were quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying. It is believed that India would be one of the potential target countries for the US to sell its drones....

Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates. Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three...

What do you know about drones? You know drones — those robotic, unmanned planes that fire missiles for the American military across Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else the United States needs to get away with murder. Well if you don’t know too much, don’t worry, that’ll change soon. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into rules that will bring the controversial aircraft into the country, creating an United States airspace buzzing with tiny, robot planes to look over every inch of American soil — and maybe more. An article published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times reveals that new drone...

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington— The radar-evading drone that crash-landed over the weekend in Iran was on a mission for the CIA, according to a senior U.S. official, raising fears that the aircraft's sophisticated technology could be exploited by Tehran or shared with other American rivals. It was unclear whether the drone's mission took it over Iran or whether it strayed there accidentally because of technical malfunctions, the official said. Though the drone flight was a CIA operation, U.S. military personnel were involved in flying the aircraft, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the...

Such is the state of U.S./Pakistan relations that no one seems fully confident this was accidental. Is there another “alliance� in the world of which that could be said — where one country wipes out two dozen troops from the other and it’s not instantly clear it was a terrible miscalculation instead of a response to some shadowy provocation?Is it “friendly fire� if the two sides aren’t really friendly? “It seems quite extraordinary that we’d just nail these posts the way they say we did,” said one senior American official who was in close touch with American and NATO officials...

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is weeks away from launching an unmanned aerial asset to help deputies fight crime. The ShadowHawk helicopter is six-feet long, weighs fifty pounds and fits in the back of an SUV. “We can put it over a fire, put it over ahazmat spill, put it over a house with a suspect barricaded inside and literally give the incident commander the ability to look at the entire scene with a bird’s eye view, ” Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said. Sheriff’s deputies will fly the ShadowHawk with nothing more than a laptop computer and a remote control...

Reporting from Washington— On the evening of April 5, a pilot settled into a leather captain's chair at Creech Air Force Base in southern Nevada and took the controls of a Predator drone flying over one of the most violent areas of southwestern Afghanistan. Minutes later, his radio crackled. A firefight had broken out. Taliban insurgents had ambushed about two dozen Marines patrolling a bitterly contested road. The Air Force captain angled his joystick and the drone veered toward the fighting taking place half a world away, where it was already morning. He powered up two Hellfire missiles under its...

WASHINGTON, Sept 20 (AFP) - Iraq could unleash a biological attack on the West by using unsuspecting people traveling abroad as carriers of deadly germs, a prominent Iraqi defector warned late Thursday. Nuclear scientist Khidhir Hamza, who left Iraq in 1994 and now lives in the United States, told the US Congress he suspected the Iraqi security service, which runs the country's biological weapons program, had already used people traveling abroad to reunite with relatives to infect exiled dissidents with the deadly AIDS virus. "An angle rarely reported -- and I found extensive incidents regarding it when I left...

The United States acknowledged Friday it was flying drones out of Ethiopia under a counter-terrorism campaign in the Horn of Africa but said the aircraft were unarmed and not carrying out raids. "The US has unarmed and unmanned aircraft at a facility there to be used only for surveillance as part of a broad, sustained integrated campaign to counter terrorism," Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby told AFP. "These unmanned aircraft are being used only for surveillance and not conducting strike missions." The Pentagon, the White House and the State Department confirmed the drone flights out of the airfield in Arba...

AT the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier. The presentation appeared to be more marketing hype than military threat; the event is China’s biggest aviation market, drawing both Chinese and foreign military buyers. But it was stark evidence that the United States’ near monopoly on armed drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American security, international law and the future of...

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, on Friday criticized the Obama administration’s action in killing Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric who advocated jihad against the United States. Paul was the strongest critic on the Republican side in condemning the attack, which was praised by other candidates including Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a libertarian like Paul, also questioned the tactic of killing a U.S. citizen without due process.

Yesterday, the Turkish media reported, “Turkey … agreed with the US on a deal involving the transfer of US-engineered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could prove crucial in combating terrorism.” The Predator drones, expected to be delivered in June 2012, are supposed to help the Turks combat terrorists, which in Ankara’s narrow definition means the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) crossing into Turkey from the Iraq border. The Predators, said Turkish defense minister İsmet Yilmaz, “are UAVs with better qualities and features than the [Israeli-made] Herons.” Ankara, the report explains, was “disappointed by Israel's failure to return six Herons it had...

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A surveillance drone has crashed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. An Associated Press reporter saw pieces of the drone, which was shaped like a small plane, before it was removed by African Union soldiers. It had crashed into a house in the city center.

Two themes have already emerged in the still-early 2012 presidential contest:Republicans are running against Washington and President Obama is running against part of Washington, the Congress that gave him his early legislative achievements.The newest entrant to the GOP race is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who touched on one of the most emotional and volatile issues sitting on the nation's debate table: border security, illegal drugs from Mexico and illegal immigrants.In his announcement speech in South Carolina on Saturday, Perry said:America’s standing in the world is in peril, not only because of disastrous economic policies, but

Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell addressed the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs regarding the legality of unmanned drones. Her basic premise;in a designated war zone the use of armed drone is legal instrument of war but when used outside the immediate area it is a violation of international law. Much debate in legal circles has led to the consensus that such actions are illegal because the US is not in a war against a state. In their view al Qaeda is a criminal organization and the Taliban is their land lord. In a narrow perspective of international law,the...

The unusually heavy barrage suggests the US has no intention of halting its drone programme despite tensions with Pakistan Three suspected US missile strikes in north-western Pakistan in less than 12 hours have killed at least 38 alleged militants, an unusually heavy barrage at a time when relations between the two countries are badly strained, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

At the most recent Zhuhai air show, the premier event for China’s aviation industry, crowds swarmed around a model of an armed, jet-propelled drone and marveled at the accompanying display of its purported martial prowess. In a video and map, the thin, sleek drone locates what appears to be a U.S. aircraft carrier group near an island with a striking resemblance to Taiwan and sends targeting information back to shore, triggering a devastating barrage of cruise missiles toward the formation of ships. Little is known about the actual abilities of the WJ-600 drone or the more than two dozen other...

NAIROBI, Kenya - US military forces landed in Somalia to retrieve the bodies of dead or wounded militants after a US drone strike targeted a group of insurgents, Somalia's defense minister said yesterday. The operation is at least the second time US troops have landed in Somalia after a targeted strike, ...

WASHINGTON — The clandestine American military campaign to combat Al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen is expanding to fight the Islamist militancy in Somalia, as new evidence indicates that insurgents in the two countries are forging closer ties and possibly plotting attacks against the United States, American officials say. An American military drone aircraft attacked several Somalis in the militant group the Shabab late last month, the officials said, killing at least one of its midlevel operatives and wounding others. The strike was carried out by the same Special Operations Command unit now battling militants in Yemen, and it represented an...

Pakistani terrorist helped carry out deadly attacks worldwideIt's not easy being the chief of one of the U.S. Department of Defense's largest contractors. At the trial of accused terrorist David Coleman Headley, he revealed that he plotted with al-Qaida and local Pakistani terrorists to assassinate the head of Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT). I. A Troubled PastDavid Headley grew up as Daood Sayed Gilani. The son of a U.S. government radio broadcaster and diplomat at the U.S. Pakistani embassy in Washington D.C., Mr. Gilani was immersed in American culture. But when his parent's marriage fractured in 1960s Mr. Gilani was dragged...

Washington – The U.S. targeted Al Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia in a drone attack last week, in what was believed to be the first such airstrike in the anarchic eastern African nation, The Washington Post reported Thursday. The U.S. drone targeted two senior members of the al-Shabaab insurgent militia, amid growing fears in Washington that the Islamist group was seeking to expand its operations overseas. The two militants, who had ties with Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born preacher believed to be hiding in Yemen, were wounded in the attack, the report quoted a military official as saying.

Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk Above we have a Global Hawk UAV that has just returned from Iraq in one nonstop flight, rather than packed and transported via C-5/C-17 cargo, as would normally be the case. Do note the mission paintings on the fuselage- looks like 250+, they're really working these things, and drones are here to stay. This super-snooper can stay up for 36 hrs while operating above 60,000 feet, fulfilling the prior high-altitude surveillance role of the legendary, manned U-2. The Global Hawk is controlled via satellite by a flight-control center team in California's Mohave desert, who enjoy the...

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio — Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds. The base’s indoor flight lab is called the “microaviary,” and for good reason. The drones in development here are designed to replicate the flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world. “We’re looking at how you hide in plain sight,”...